GILLIAN LUCKY

For many of us, school days were re­al­ly hap­py days and per­haps those form part of our fond­est mem­o­ries. Like all stu­dents, we too faced daunt­ing chal­lenges and many may share the view that chil­dren to­day have it much eas­i­er in terms of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to and af­ford­abil­i­ty of a good and sound ed­u­ca­tion. What has re­mained con­sis­tent through­out the decades is the fact that many schools are blessed with a cadre of ded­i­cat­ed teach­ers led by prin­ci­pals who recog­nise that the wel­fare of their re­spec­tive schools are of para­mount im­por­tance. That hav­ing been said, much has changed over the years with the quest for in­tel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion reach­ing an all-time high, fu­elled by sig­nif­i­cant ad­vances in the field of in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy. We have moved from the age of the com­put­er to the era of mass in­stan­ta­neous com­mu­ni­ca­tion that has re­sult­ed in the fur­ther shrink­ing of our glob­al vil­lage. We are lit­er­al­ly a world com­prised of bil­lions of peo­ple who are able to keep in con­tact lit­er­al­ly by the touch of a but­ton. But liv­ing in a time when tech­nol­o­gy is a ma­jor dri­ver for and in­di­ca­tor of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, em­pha­sis still must be placed on the im­por­tance of the school cur­ricu­lum, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of stu­dents. And that re­mains the chal­lenge-en­sur­ing that the cur­ricu­lum is rel­e­vant and cur­rent and specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress­es the goals and as­pi­ra­tions of our na­tion. The cur­ricu­lum must not run sec­ond on a race course that is be­ing led by bom­bard­ment of for­eign ma­te­r­i­al that is not in the best in­ter­est of our youth.

Pri­ma­ry ap­proach

The Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, in­di­cat­ed re­cent­ly that the cur­rent pri­ma­ry school cur­ricu­lum is too aca­d­e­m­ic and that his min­istry has un­der­tak­en to in­tro­duce a more uni­ver­sal style of ed­u­ca­tion. The last re­view of the cur­ricu­lum was con­duct­ed al­most 13 years ago and that alone sug­gests, in light of all the change that this new cen­tu­ry has brought, that there is a need for im­me­di­ate up­date.

In prin­ci­ple there can be no ar­gu­ment against the min­is­ter's ob­ser­va­tion, for as an out­stand­ing aca­d­e­m­ic who has al­so proven him­self quite ca­pa­ble on the crick­et field, Dr Gopeesingh re­alis­es the need for a holis­tic ed­u­ca­tion. The re­al is­sue is the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a syl­labus that will re­flect a healthy bal­ance of both aca­d­e­m­ic and non-aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects with­out com­pro­mis­ing the course of study that must be com­plet­ed for suc­cess­ful en­try at the sec­ondary school lev­el.

Stake­hold­ers meet­ing

When deal­ing with a mat­ter as im­por­tant as the ed­u­ca­tion of our youth, there must be ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tion with crit­i­cal stake­hold­ers. It is not ad­vis­able, how­ev­er no­ble the in­ten­tion and great the pur­pose, to im­pose change with­out com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis, mean­ing­ful in­put and op­por­tu­ni­ty for dis­cus­sion. There­fore when the sug­ges­tion was made that co-cur­ric­u­lar and ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties should oc­cur af­ter school hours and on week­ends, an un­der­stand­able ob­jec­tion was raised by those who ap­pre­ci­at­ed that the fa­cil­i­ta­tors of such ac­tiv­i­ties and pro­grammes, main­ly teach­ers al­ready in the sys­tem, would be called up­on to make fur­ther sac­ri­fices that would im­pact on their per­son­al time set aside for fam­i­ly and oth­er com­mit­ments. Thank­ful­ly, the con­tro­ver­sy was not al­lowed to get out of con­trol and good sense has pre­vailed with the min­is­ter agree­ing to meet with stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss the re­struc­tur­ing of the sys­tem to en­able the ac­tiv­i­ties to be con­duct­ed dur­ing school hours with­out caus­ing un­due dis­trac­tion or dis­rup­tion.

Mean­ing­ful men­tor­ship

The con­cept of men­tor­ship is be­ing pro­mot­ed world­wide as a means of en­sur­ing that suc­ces­sion plan­ning does not op­er­ate in a vac­u­um. I dare to state as an aside that on­ly in the realm of lo­cal pol­i­tics might it be dif­fi­cult to find a men­tor ex­tolling the virtues of in­tegri­ty, hon­esty, pa­tri­o­tism, truth and wis­dom. But, back on top­ic, the fact is that many teach­ers are them­selves men­tors for hun­dreds who have passed through their hands as for­mer stu­dents. The sug­ges­tion that schools be made part of a work­able men­tor­ship pro­gramme has been tried and proven suc­cess­ful and if in­ter­est­ed, the min­is­ter could eas­i­ly have his team con­duct re­search to de­ter­mine the pro­gramme which was cre­at­ed and used by a teacher in the south­land to link two schools, one a sec­ondary school in San Fer­nan­do and the oth­er a pri­ma­ry school in Moru­ga, in a sib­ling type re­la­tion­ship in which there was a sought of adop­tion of the lat­ter school by the oth­er in­sti­tu­tion act­ing as a "big sis­ter." Ob­vi­ous­ly there is no need to rein­vent the wheel when peo­ple who have pi­lot­ed such projects are still alive and anx­ious to give ser­vice. And we are so lucky to have such out­stand­ing in­di­vid­u­als will­ing to im­part knowl­edge that it is a shame that noth­ing is done to en­cour­age them to be part of the pro­gramme of en­hanced ed­u­ca­tion.

Arts and mu­sic

While con­duct­ing my tele­vi­sion pro­gramme last night, a caller in­di­cat­ed that more has to be done to en­cour­age chil­dren to play at least one in­stru­ment and the teach­ing of mu­sic ought to be an in­te­gral part of the school cur­ricu­lum. Ref­er­ence was made to a for­mer min­is­ter in the 50s and 60s who be­lieved that chil­dren should be giv­en an in­stru­ment and taught to play and mas­ter it. The caller's view is that an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of mu­sic and the arts is in­te­gral if we are to deal with vio- lence and delin­quen­cy in schools. I agree whole­heart­ed­ly for her point is like mu­sic to my ears. I con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate that teach­ing stu­dents to play the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, which should in­clude im­part­ing knowl­edge about its in­ven­tion, should be manda­to­ry on the school syl­labus. I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to learn that un­der the stew­ard­ship of Dr An­na Ma­hase and with the mu­si­cal tal­ent of her sis­ter Lenore, St Au­gus­tine Girls High School was the first school to have a steel or­ches­tra. I am aware that oth­er schools have for the longest time in­clud­ed in their cur­ricu­lum non-aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects and ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties and, for­tu­nate­ly, I at­tend­ed schools that pro­mot­ed the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of stu­dents. I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank all the teach­ers who guid­ed me along the right path and to teach­ers gen­er­al­ly who take the time to go the ex­tra mile to en­sure that their stu­dents are suc­cess­ful in their par­tic­u­lar ar­eas of tal­ent. Dur­ing this time of in­tense re­flec­tion for the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty, I wish every­one a safe and Holy East­er.